30 December 2008

30 December 2008

… a scoundrel.

15. Watched Dark Knight, Valkyrie, and Wall-E (in ascending order of awesomeness; I recognize my lack of italics for the title of movies– I have chosen to exclude them to not detract from the emphasis of the above statement that is italicized and oh so very true)

16. Angered persons over discussions about tongue piercings (please note that the anger was stirred due to discussions based on hypotheticals and not a tongue piercing in actual existence)

17. Decided to always order King of Siam when at The Three Sisters and Chipole pizza when at Bazbeaux

So I’ve done a few other things (including but not limited to stuff on the list), but the purpose of this post is stated in the first line–I apologize if you’ve already read up to this point. I think I’ve overstayed my extension; I’m sure my professor has already painted a target on my back. Today I’m spending the day with Bryn again before he leaves for New York tomorrow; he doesn’t know anything about food motifs in Russian literature or the differences Dostoevsky and Tolstoy’s applications of food imagery in their writings. Yesterday it was Angelina, Jamela, and Catherine; they have no knowledge of these things either. Let’s hope I gather enough of my brains together to complete my paper before the end of the year (!?). I attribute my lack of progress to my gnawing fear of writing as well as fear of not allocating the appropriate serving of badassery that my topic rightfully deserves. (Included yet sub-reasons: an underestimation of the epic proportions this break proved to have and the decline of my accompanying work ethic; definitely an overestimation of the amount of time I would realistically assign to writing this paper despite the badassery of my topic.) Should I explain this to my professor? Probably not; he would just use neon yellow paint– the kind that glows in the dark– instead of the regular red. I digress; simply, I fail at life and/or time management.

I will attempt to make up for the lack of substance by sharing the following image (which was taken through the window on the third floor of a building downtown; nothing was altered).

26 December 2008

25 December 2008

Consumed large amounts of delectably spicy Indian food at the Taj Mahal

Played “The ghost under the bed is going to eat my feet!!! (insert high-pitched screaming)” with two of the coolest and cutest first graders

Hid in the IUPUI library trying to work on my paper but failing due to getting distracted by my unfamiliarity with the sight of large cohorts of buildings instead of large cohorts of trees

Walked around downtown in twenty degree weather and passing my would-have-been-home realizing that I seceded a lifestyle of walking around downtown everyday

Decided to always order the kid size hot chocolate because it is the exact same thing as the size small hot chocolate except two dollars cheaper due to the fact that it is of a lesser temperature since it is for kids but the lady at the counter will willingly make it the hotter chocolate for you if you inform her that the drink is for you and not a kid therefore saving you two dollars

Made Grandhi lie about crying (because of my lack of communion taking for the past two and a half years) in efforts to not embarrass me

Felt bad not only because of the above point, but also because of my lack of completing my research paper

Epically failed at recognizing Bryn, whom of which I have not seen in two years (Saturday can’t come soon enough)

Epically won at staying awake for the entirety of midnight mass for the first time (Father Steve addressed Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Human during the homily and remained completely oblivious to this; I am not sure if I was compelled to stay awake due to his ridiculous misrepresentation of this Christmas icon multiple times or to the fact that Rudolph played a central role not only in Santa’s journeys but also in midnight mass’ homily)

Lost $100

Got the verbal slap in the face I have been secretly seeking

Inserted large bites of puto and palabok into my mouth followed by the subsequent chewing and swallowing between discussions about Derrick’s brief flirtation with “swinging over to the other side” and the mutation of microorganisms

Watched Filipino television with great amusement (I don’t know which one I like better: the show about the guy who got turned into a girl by fairies and then got turned back into a guy, except this time, he retained the mind and heart of the girl, making him a bakla OR the one about the girl who is actually a goddess who saves the world and can transform into a mermaid, centaur, and avian dinosaur)

Wrote a blog about things that I have done besides completing my research paper

21 December 2008

After classes ended on Friday, I spent nearly four hours completing these less-than-10KB-a-piece text files as part of my asteroid photometery research project. The basic premise of the research is to determine the rotation rate of asteroids. This is done by measuring the brightness of the asteroid; taking photos of the asteroids enables the recording of their brightness. (The single ingle 20-inch Richey-Chretien telescope at Southern Sky Observatory in New South Wales, Australia takes the photos of the asteroids.) Once these photos are taken, the resulting light curve’s period is the rotation rate of the asteroid. The orientation axis of the asteroid can be determined by the changes in the amplitude’s brightness over a period of years.

Right now, I just completed the stage of selecting asteroids to potentially study (hence the scripts pictured above); the sheer number of parameters in choosing asteroids is wonderfully particular. I had to examine moon phase charts to select certain weeks to observe the asteroid (basically during the weeks in which the moon is not full since it’s bright light detracts the visibility of other stellar objects) and set the time of day to begin taking the photographs (one hour after sunset). Once this was established, I searched for asteroids with parameters for its azimuth, magnitude, and altitude. The software I used generated a list of about 50 asteroids; from these, I had to check it’s quality to make sure the asteroid is worth examining (a ranking of the amount of research done on the asteroid,0 being next to nothing and 5 being well known and established; since this is research, 0-2 were the target qualities). This usually funneled the amount of asteroids to about ten or so. Then I made sure that these asteroids weren’t located in the Milky Way (visual obstructions abound). In astronomy, everything is relative to something, so I had to select particular focus stars during specific times of the day, two near the zenith and the other in a cluster near the meridian line. There are a whole batch of parameters that deal with how the pictures are taken. I’ve left out many details; the research is very specific (what research isn’t?). Frustrations rose when I’d do a string of work, like determining location and setting specific parameters, and then finding that I set the time wrong or I set the date on the 30th instead of the 31st, making all the information I gathered completely meaningless. I don’t think I can express my appreciation of the baddassery of the names of the asteroids. I’m especially anxious to see how Polonia turns out. Hopefully not stabbed in a closet.

7 December 2008

1 December 2008

Every morning, I descended the century old staircase in the house of my great-grandparents of Panitan province, sometimes to fulfill the demands of my dry mouth by drinking cold water, other times to walk the dirt roads waiting for a lofty wind to wake me up from my dreams. Every morning, when I reached the second to last step, I saw Papa’s corpse resting inside a cushion-lined coffin in the living room. The high vapor pressure from the mixture of food-caused aromas filled the air; April and her little sister laughed as they underhandedly won another game of Lucky 8 against Derrick, outsmarting their clever American cousin. Lola Dada would grab my hand and ask me to go with her to buy some coca-colas. I would tell her no, suggesting that Fatima should accompany her instead; her light skin always left a trail of awe-stricken stares. Behind the house, I sat in the humidity, my eye following the untamed divide between the tops of trees and the undersides of empty clouds. It never rained the entire week and a half, even after the funeral.

Today I walked in the snow and wondered why I haven’t wondered about these things in so long.